James B. McKean

1871

Brigham Young Murder Indictment (1871)

Third District Court, Utah Territory

In 1871, under Judge James B. McKean's direction, indictments were issued in Third District Court for the arrests of Bill Hickman, Brigham Young, Hosea Stout, Porter Rockwell, Daniel H. Wells, Morris Meacham, William Kimball, John Flack, and others for the murders of Richard Yates, Bucks, and the Aiken Party. Hickman alone was charged for the murder of Charles M. Drown. Brigham Young, the President of the LDS Church, was indicted for murder alongside his enforcer (Hickman), his bodyguard (Rockwell), and a member of the First Presidency (Wells). The indictments were obtained through the efforts of the Gentile Ring: Robert Baskin, John Beadle, and Judge McKean, appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant. The Ring used Hickman's published confession from Brigham's Destroying Angel to find a basis for indicting Young. The US Supreme Court overturned everything on April 15, 1872, in the Englebrecht Case. McKean had illegally impaneled juries composed only of non-Mormons and known Mormon dissenters. Hickman was the chief casualty: shunned, described as a notorious scoundrel, excommunicated, lived in poverty, died in Lander, Wyoming in 1883. Sometime after his release in 1872, Hickman arranged a meeting with William Kimball, asked for two witnesses, and solemnly declared that his published confessions were a lie from the wild boar story onward. He said he had been promised 50,000 dollars for his story and his willingness to testify in connection with the indictment against Brigham Young. The system protected Brigham Young. Hickman was sacrificed. Same pattern as the John D. Lee case at Mountain Meadows.